Public Service Helper Robots in Korea

The Swirling
Brain sent us a Digital
Chosunilbo news article about the coming deployment of Public Service
Helper Robots (PSHRs) in 20 post offices in Korea. The robots will
assist customers with tasks like checking postal codes. The PSHR is one
version of a more general robot called the Information Contents Robot
(ICR) or the Ubiquitous Robotic Companion (URC). The ICR will
also be deployed soon for healthcare applications which include taking
care of diabetics and reading stories to children. The Korea Ministry of Information and
Communication hopes to deploy one million broadband connected ICR
robots to apartment buildings by 2007. The robots were developed by ETRI
and Next Eye. One version of the robot seems to be pictured in the ETRI
site banner. A rendering of another UCR robot can be found in an
older Korean
Times story.